Local body election voting needs to go digital or face even lower turnout - Ben Goodale

With turnout at just 40%, is it time New Zealand rethinks how local elections are run? Photo / Getty Images

THE FACTS

• Auckland’s voter turnout has dropped to 25%, highlighting a significant decline in participation.
• The reliance on postal voting is criticised, with calls for a secure digital voting system.
• Low turnout risks elections being dominated by entrenched blocs, reinforcing the status quo.

I discovered over the weekend that I have mystical powers of clairvoyance.

Back in 2019, after the local elections, when Auckland’s turnout was an appalling 35%, I wrote in the Herald suggesting ways to boost participation, darkly predicting we might see 25% at the next election if nothing changed.

I wasn’t entirely right. It took two election cycles to get there, but here we are now: 25%. That’s a 10-point drop in Auckland (nearly 30% for stats fans) from what was already an unacceptably low level of participation in deciding who runs our largest city. Sure, outside of the cities turnout is better, but it’s still not great.

We are a global low. In England’s May 2025 local elections, overall turnout was 34%. In London, the 2024 Greater London Authority (GLA) election saw 40% turnout. In Melbourne, the 2024 city council election’s turnout was a whopping 67%.

So what’s gone wrong? Why can’t people be bothered to vote? And why, after years of warning signs, has there been so little innovation from central or local government?

When I reread my 2019 piece, I was struck by how little has changed, and how much could have. I had plenty of ideas then, and only one or two have been half-heartedly implemented. Yes, there are now orange ballot boxes in some supermarkets (a good move), and we’ve thankfully stopped voting for district health boards. But beyond that, nothing.

We could be a leader in digital democracy (currently that’s Estonia). Instead, we’re still stuck in a paper-based past.

The most glaring issue is how we vote. Expecting all people to engage via postal voting in 2025 is absurd. Many under-30s have never posted a letter. Finding a mailbox is a scavenger hunt, and even the official orange boxes are few and far between. In Titirangi, for example, there was just one orange box, open only Monday to Friday.

Auckland’s 25% turnout is one of the lowest among major global cities. Photo / Supplied

Imagine instead a secure voting app: log in, view candidates’ bios and policies, tap your preferences, lock in your vote. Simple, transparent, traceable. And voting papers aren’t exactly safe - they get wet, lost, could be filled out by anyone or chewed by dogs.

Digital voting isn’t radical, it’s simply overdue. My company’s latest 2025 Loyalty State of the Nation survey shows what’s obvious to anyone watching behaviour trends: for those under 65, expectations of digital are rising fast. Voting should be no different.

Yes, we need to be mindful of cybersecurity, but then we bank online, trade shares online, and can operate cars by app. The best solution is to offer both – digital and analogue, reflecting our evolving society.

But it’s not just the format; the engagement model is broken.

The campaign period drags on for weeks, breeding indifference. Urgency is the lifeblood of participation, yet our process feels like a slow-motion endurance test. A shorter, sharper campaign, say, a week of active voting, would focus attention and energy.

Meanwhile, the message of ‘why vote?’ has been lost. There’s no compelling campaign to sell the value of local democracy. What it brings, what happens when you don’t bother.

Marketers know how to fix this. The principles of engagement and conversion aren’t mysterious: clarity, simplicity, motivation. Instead, we’ve built a confusing maze of long candidate lists, dense information, and disengaging processes seemingly designed to repel casual voters, and anyone under 30.

The visual clutter doesn’t help. Weeks of billboards littering neighbourhoods doesn’t make people more informed, just more indifferent and it sort of helps make it all seem a farce.

Low turnout has real consequences. When few people vote, elections are dominated by entrenched blocs and familiar names, reinforcing the status quo. Or worse, enabling candidates with no real mandate or aptitude, buoyed by apathy, to end up making serious decisions about local infrastructure, housing, and transport.

A healthy democracy needs competition: candidates tested, ideas challenged, accountability demanded. Instead, too many councils in the last term have been dysfunctional, disorganised, and disappointing, failing to deliver the improvements communities expect.

We can do better. But first, someone (preferably in Wellington) has to take this seriously. The current system is outdated and failing. Until we embrace innovation and treat participation as a design problem to be solved, not a civic duty to be nagged about, we’ll keep sliding toward irrelevance.

At this rate, by 2028, Mystic Ben predicts 20%.

Catch up on the debates that dominated the week by signing up to our Opinion newsletter – a weekly round-up of our best commentary.